Road to Auer Session 7: He Was A Drider Boy, He Looked Like A Spider Boy

Our next session began with the party weighing their options. They had rested for a few hours and discussed many courses of actions. Quiggles, Balziros, Gorg, Nonne, Longshot, and Terror stood just outside the enemy base and decided to head back to the surface and get help. They backed their way out of the tunnel and found the way behind them had flooded, the tide had come in. Through their various means they traversed the waterways back the way they came. They found the chasm Bob had climbed up and set about making their way back towards the surface. As they met up with Bob again, they asked him about the chamber across the chasm, he told them he had not gone across but it seemed spooky and only was used by the One Who Walks in Shadows. Needing no more facts the group chose to make their way across the chasm to the spooky place, forgetting everything about heading to the surface. They told Bob to watch over their revolution for them and crossed the gap. 

They walked web coated tunnels, finding strange almost fiberoptic webbing intermingled with the normal giant spider webs. They came to a large chamber with a tunnel leading out on the other side. The entire chamber was webbing and, on the ceiling, they could see what appeared to be a cocoon or a hut of some sort. Strange piles of web covered bones had the thicker webbing leading up to the ceiling web cluster. The group debated setting the whole place on fire and the ramifications of cavern oxygen levels with that much flame. During the discussion Nonne threw a rope tied spear into the web structure and yanked it down. The group froze as the structure shattered and a blood red fiendish choldrith screamed at them. Combat was had, the creature seemed to have some elemental resistances and was able to distract the party for a few rounds before succumbing to their multiple attacks and spells. they searched the wreckage and found surface coins.

They continued for a few hours down the path and eventually made it to a dwarven mining site with four skeletal duergar dwarves. Balziros used turn undead and the skeletons fled deeper into the mine. The group followed at a normal pace after them and eventually found an entire dwarven duergar city that had been flooded. They could see traces of the filament webbing across the city, even on the ceiling. The buildings were still mostly intact, many were stone with dark gold embellishments. The noticed the water in the streets was only about knee deep and there were skeletons under the water. Under closer investigations they noticed the skeletons had a hole in the top of their skulls, as if something either broke out of the skull, or something else pierced through it.

They made their way to the largest building they could find, which turned out to be the town center. The building itself was about forty feet tall in a fifty-foot-tall cavern. They walked up the front stairs, forced the doors open, and walked through the wreckage. Broken shelves, moldy tomes, broken bits of masonry, were moved aside so the party could pass through. Eventually they found a central hall or throne room. Seated on an ancient throne was a skeletal dwarf. The group entered the chamber and went to check on the corpse. They watched as it rose from the throne like a marionette. The group looked up to see a large spider with a human torso coming out. The fight with the drider began.

They quickly severed the strands supporting the dwarf king corpse and got into position, the drider was on the ceiling and would be an issue. The group had accidentally lined up, half of them were in lightning bolt formation. The Drider dropped down, blasted them, and climbed back up the wall while readying a longbow. Two large spiders also came down into the chamber to vex the party… but did not last long. The group launched spells and arrows at the drider and he returned fire. Terror launching elemental blasts, Longshot casting hunter’s mark and shooting at the beast, Gorg and Nonne making short work of the other spiders, Quiggles blasted away, and Balziros hurt the drider with Toll the dead. The drider grew tired of the fray and fled out a hole in the ceiling. Nonne scrambled up after him and saw the drider was climbing on the ceiling and was already making great speed. Nonne grabbed one of the filaments on the ceiling and yanked on it. 

The filament sprang like a guitar string, knocking the drider by chance. The drider fell from the ceiling and through a building. Nonne cut the filament and swung down, letting go to fall onto the drider, impaling it with his great sword. The group followed on the ground and could see the damage to the building. It turned out to be a flooded bakery and moldy flour surged into the air around the building. As a group they laid into the drider and finally Terror let loose magic missiles that ended the threat. The group collected themselves and started looting the shop and drider. They found a magical folding boat, a ring of protection, and a potion of mind reading. They holed up in the ruins of the bakery and we ended there for the night.

We now hit the point where our store we played at was forced to adjust its hours with the virus and hopefully in the future we will be able to play again. It has been an honor to game with the kind folk that chose to play at my table for the last four years over these four campaigns. For a few of them I was their first dungeon master and I am always happy to introduce people to this amazing hobby.

Road to Auer Session 6: Talking Spiders and the Catacombs of Labor Ethics

The party was hired by Corsco to head into the Church of the Three within Telas and head into the crypts to grab an item from one of the soon to be interred. When they got there, they found there was supposed to be a funerary ritual for one of the traveling clerics. They found Brother Cody, the dwarven caretaker knocked unconscious and bound in webbing and the door to the chapel slightly ajar. They woke up the caretaker and noticed he was missing his hands, which was not a new thing, they had just not met him before. His helper golem was out getting him more supplies at the moment so he was alone as greeter. Something bit him and everything went dark. Nonne, Gorg, Halanthis, 04, Balziros, Terror, Longshot, and Quiggles made their way into the church and found it empty of clerics, but over populated with webs. They found drag marks leading into the catacombs but had to solve a simple puzzle to drop the stairs.

Once below the group found themselves in a series of catacomb tunnels leading in all directions. To the east they heard movement and saw something getting dragged. Balziros and Nonne ran over to check it out and found a wolf sized spider dragging an unconscious priest down the hallway. They told it to stop and he did. The spider, whose name they could not complete with humanlike mouths and nicknamed Bob, was taking this man to his boss, the One Who Walks In Shadows. It seemed the boss wanted these clerics for some purpose but the lower spiders had not been informed, just being the grunt work force. The group asked how the spider could talk and Bob told them he was awakened, he and his other spiders were awoken by this One Who Walks In Shadows and were doing his bidding. Quiggles took this chance to ask if the spider was happy where he worked and if he would be interested in a tiny little revolution against his masters. At that moment more spiders came out of another tunnel behind the group and attacked the party.

One of the spiders was the size of a horse and kept disappearing into the ethereal plane while they fought him, the giant wolf spiders were attacking with spells, and the creepy choldrith, a terrible mix of person and spider, snuck up on the group and vexed Nonne. The spider casters targeted the rear of the group, attempting to identify threats, they chose poorly. After a few rounds of combat thousands of tiny swarming spiders pulled out of a crack in the wall and attempted to cover Balziros and Terror. Failing, one swarm ended up short lived and the other returned to the wall. The other spiders did not expect to be stabbed by Longshot as much, their lives were very short indeed, even more so with three paladins. Both Gorg and 04 were close enough to cause them all sorts of problems. The phase spider failed at eluding the group, dying to the spells of Terror. The group looked around and could hear Nonne yelling at his foe, the choldrith was a jerk and kept running away and throwing webs at Nonne. He eventually had it cornered in one of the catacomb’s preparation sites. A half-spirited attempt for peace was made and one of the paladins ended the beast. The group looked around and found an elf laid out on a cold slab wearing a cameo pendant that seemed to scream Corsco, so they figured that was what he was after.

The group went back to Bob, who had been hiding as the unconscious person’s back pack the entire battle. Bob told them about the hole in the wall and the spider base beyond. The clerics had been working on this area of the catacombs and the spiders took advantage of the building to do some demolition of their own. The group pressed Bob for more information on what he would be doing with the body he was carrying around. Eventually they convinced him to trade his smelly old human body in webbing for a nice juicy surface rabbit. Quiggle conjured a meat facsimile dead rabbit for Bob, offering to trade it for the bound body. Bob was on the fence until he realized this must be a special above ground rabbit, it even glowed, so he accepted the deal. The group woke up the priest to find his name was Jarel and set him back to the church above. Quiggles also told Bob not to eat this rabbit right away, he should hide it somewhere so it did not get stolen by the other spiders, and by no means should he eat it now. Quiggles knowing the conjuration would expire as soon as he either summoned another thing or the rabbit took any damage, information that will come in handy later. Bob was ecstatic. They asked him about the lay out of the spider base and he offered to show them. Halanthis had seen a giant spider before so he beast shaped into one. Halanthis and Bob made their way into the caves and explore the base while the rest of the group waited back in the catacombs.

Bob gave Halanthis the grand tour. He met the guards, got to see the web chamber full of spider egg nests, saw the arcane workshop where all the spiderlings that showed an aptitude for magic were trained in the fantastic spell of magic missile, and eventually was shown the pretty big chasm. There was a thirty-foot wide chasm within a larger chamber with a opposite “shore” with a tunnel leading away. a voice from the far tunnel cut across the distance demanding Bob go and get the body he had been tasked to get. Bob said he was working on it, he just wanted to show some outside help the ropes, gesturing at Halanthis. The voice, which belonged to a large elf body attached to a spider moved further down into the tunnel and out of sight. Bob and Halanthis returned to the others.

Bob told them his boss was kind of mad, he doesn’t really see the boss often but knows he is powerful. The group thanked Bob and sent him back into the base to hide his magic rabbit meat. He gleefully ran off. Halanthis explained to the rest of the group what was ahead and a plot was made. The group walked up to the two spider guards, the guards were armed with spears and shields and demanded to know who they were. They told the spiders they were with Bob and asked if the guards were interested in better wages, more time off, pensions, and more food then they could imagine. The guards had never heard about revolutions before, but that quickly changed. They were hesitant at first but where offered berets, which Quiggles summoned two hats connected by a thin thread and in the distance, they heard a pitiful wailing scream of woe. Not sure what exactly what had happened the group figured Bob was in trouble. The guards were excited about two hats as well as this revolution thing and let the group pass, assured when the party came back, they would bring real resistance berets back for the guards, but the guards just made their own with webbing. The group got to the webbing room. The room was about forty feet long and wide with about two feet thick webbing coating the floor. They could see the main exit as well as the arcane training room. They concocted magical means of climbing ropes with webbing attached to them but Nonne and Balziros just ended up walking and cutting through the webs, avoiding the egg clusters.

Within the magic room they found young spiders attempting to cast the biggest spell they could, magic missile. While adorable and dangerous, the group decided to teach them about revolutions. One of the small spiders giggled and turned in a circle, revolving around his own axis. Nonne and Quiggles did the talking in this room and eventually were able to borrow the rest of the spell book the spiders were using under the guise of being book inspectors, and took the higher-level spells for themselves. They joined the rest of the group by the chasm and could hear sobbing from deep within the pit.

Balziros tossed the magic light coin down the pit and lost sight of it and did not hear it hit the ground. The group made a sequence of ropes to scale down the side of the chasm, most were real, one of which was a conjuration again. The group made their way into the pit and at the bottom found a larger cavern system, which was damp, but not from spider tears. They found Bob sobbing his eight eyes out… he had broken his meat rabbit somehow and was beside himself. The group assured him his future was bright, and better food would be coming this way. They calmed him down with a field promotion and asked him to look after the fledgling revolution in the caves above. They asked him what was down here and he told them about the tides and the tunnels. He directed them to the important place down here and climbed back up the walls. The group followed his guidance and made their way to a path that led upwards and into a large cavern that had what appeared to be a large giant built fortress surrounded by multiple war camps. Now in the midst of numerous foes, we stopped there for the night.

Road to Auer Session 5: Unicorn Rodeo Goes Down Nothing Like Legend.

After convincing Balziros to not eat the heart, Gorg, Harvey, Terror, Longshot, and Balziros noticed a small figure entering the clearing. It appeared to be a gnome. He introduced himself as Quiggles and showed them he was a wizard. while they explained what was happening in the sudden snowfall another stranger entered the clearing. It appeared to be a white furred satyr. He introduced himself as Keyhaw and asked them if any one had seen any unicorn hearts, it seemed there was a forest guardian that had been killed and its heart taken. Reluctantly Balziros admitted he had it. Keyhaw informed the group they would have to return the heart to the unicorn or the entire forest would become a frozen wasteland. The group agrees this would be wise and asked if there were any threats to look out for. Keyhaw told them there was a strange red minotaur wandering the snow-covered woods.

The group set off, Longshot leading the way. Quickly they realized the entre forest was covered in ice and snow. They found the river and everyone but Gorg slipped on the ice. They noticed something blue and quick moving through the tree line and were greeted with a cackle. A tall blue skinned hag in a toga climbed down into view and asked who the party was. The group wisely withheld their names. She explained her friends were trapped in the ice and it was hard to feed them. The party peered into the solid ice and could see strange skeletal creatures looking like undead mermaids with whip like tails. Not trusting the obviously scary with the group asked what the “friends” ate, and she informed them meat… from travelers… animals, she meant animals. Balziros promised to bring the nice lady, the witch Amelda, meat if they found any and she let the group go.

They found a path that took them up a ridge, Longshot finding the unguarded path and as they climbed could see a displacer beast and its kitten playing on the ice river. Quietly they made it deeper into the hills. The group stopped when they noticed a few lumps on the snow and two large purple corruption oozes charged the group. They quickly found that magical attacks and spells would cause small buds of ooze to grow off the main ooze and electrical and slashing damage caused the entire ooze to split in half. Harvey stabbed one with his gifted blade from his distant cousin and saw a slightly magic effect bloom in the blade. After a few missteps and many oozes, the group rose victoriously from the melee.

The group traveled on and found a copse of pale trees with leaves like ice. The path had strange ice fairies dancing between the branches. Harvey had experience with fey creatures and approached. He talked with the lead fairy, most troops have them, and asked what was up. The fairy told him that all the ice fairies had just gone to sleep for the summer and suddenly the ice woke them again, he thinks it has something to do with the ghost horse. Pressed for more information Krickzle the fairy told the group that when the unicorn was made heartless its soul became dark and twisted. Now its body, with a horn and hooves made of flame is wreaking havoc. The group thanked hi for the information and made their way towards the loud sounds of yelling and crashing.

At the next clearing they could see this undead unicorn, with a massive hole in its chest, sprinting away from a red minotaur that was trying to jump on its back and catch it. They watched as this transpired for about twenty minutes and could hear someone shouting out encouragement to the minotaur from up above. Longshot spotted the skeletal bard with a lute up in a tall tree attempting the inspirational messages. Harvey and Quiggles came up with what seemed like a terrible plan at the time, hopping on the back of the unicorn and mage handing the heart back in place. While they were planning, they saw the unicorn stab the minotaur a few times when it got to close.

As the unicorn was running towards where the party was plotting, they launched their plan. Harvey and Quiggles misty stepped onto the back of the moving beast, Harvey was facing the wrong way but otherwise they were fine. They both cast mage hand and attempted to push the heart back into place. It was half way in as they made the turn, headed towards the rest of the group. Gorg yelled out to the minotaur and persuaded him to stop it, which he did, oddly confused at who these people were. Balziros ran up to the minotaur and commanded him to cower, so on its turn it did. The unicorn ran at Balziros, who stepped out of the way and the minotaur was trampled beneath the flaming hooves of rage. Longshot and Terror took aim at the bard to silence him, launching spell and arrows into his skeletal form. The skeleton used shatter on the unicorn, seeing if his master could not have it, no one would, and hitting some crazy living people on its back seemed helpful too. The minotaur became the target of many attacks, Gorg breaking off both of his horns with her maul. Harvey and Quiggles rode the raging undead unicorn as it made an ice bridge up to the bard, seeking to silence it as well. as they got to the top the bard used thunder wave in an attempt to push the impending threat off the ramp and to the ground. Harvey fell, thinking the sixty-foot fall into ice and minotaur blood would the last thing he felt, but Quiggles saved him with feather fall. After landing both Quiggles and Harvey used their mage hands to push the heart fully back into place. The skeleton fell to the combined efforts of Terror and Longshot.

The unicorn, its heart restored, transformed back to normal. It had been investigating this corruption and was struck down by some large giant creature. It remembered the cold, but not what was happening around it. It thanked the group, healed them of any injuries and started fixing the forest. The group noticed the minotaur corpse had dissolved and might not have been from this realm, but the horns remained. The session ended there for the night, for simplicity, they made their way back to town.

***Some events were very loosely based on the 1985 Ridley Scott movie Legend staring Tim Curry, Tom Cruise, and Mia Sara. If you have no clue what I am talking about go check it out!***

Road to Auer Session 4: Into Briar's Woods

Halanthis, Longshot, Terror, Balziros, Gorg, Nonne, and Harvey made their now much richer selves into Briar’s Woods to investigate the sickness and corruption growing within. The forest was cold, damp, and dark, but luckily, they have both a ranger and a nature cleric, so travel was easy for them. They saw strange purple patches of magical residue that was eating away at trees and plants and seemed to grow around points of magic. While traveling they heard a weird sound and stopped to prepare for whatever was coming. Through the underbrush they saw an armored man peering out, his face pale white, smooth and featureless. Thinking that was creepy they called out a greeting and it pulled out a longbow and opened fire. The group scattered and watched as more creatures like him came out of the underbrush, some with crystal knives and another with spells. As the group harmed these creatures, they saw purple goo bursting from their wounds and the pale skin like substance filling in the gaps. Nonne fought the mage, which was unable to hit him with any of its attacks until its friends got close, then Nonne got hit many times. Balziros took a bite out of one of them and found they tasted terrible. The attacks of these assailants were stronger than expected but they were eventually defeated. The party looted the dissolving bodies and found they all had the daggers and a few pounds of ritual incense, their armor was too saturated with the goo to be useful.

They continued on their journey until Balziros spotted strange yellow musky mist like spores in a small clearing. As the group approached, they saw a body stand up out of the spore filled clearing. They attempted to talk to it but found it was uninterested. Balziros used his channel divinity to try to charm this creature, knowing it was not undead. The more they investigated and intuited they realized this was a plant-based zombie and most likely part of some strange colony. They were kind of right but still wrong. They let it be and watched it bury itself in the spores again and realized the clearing had quite a few of these piles.

The next leg of the journey took them past more areas of corruption and eventually to foothills leading into the larger mountains. They remembered elves lived in this area so Longshot shouted an elvish greeting. They heard the scrambling of claws on stone and a large dragon looking creature with an elf on its back peeked over the rock face. They exchanged greetings and explained their intent. Balziros hissed at the dragon like creature, which they found out was a type of drake, for he did not like lizards bigger than himself. For Balziros it got worse. The party followed the elf and his mount to a large cave in the mountain and found many of the elves had been hit with the sickness as well as the alpha drake, the huge size progenitor of all the drakes in the forest. The drake rider, named Allendar, informed the group that the drakes and the elves became sick when the strange purple rot started to appear. They have seen signs of strange camp sites what seemed to have been the spots dark rituals had been cast at but have been unable to locate the culprits. The party debated options of searching the woods when a sky drake and rider came soaring in and revealed to location of a current ritual site. The party rushed to intervene.

After their short journey they found a broken fort with a wooden ruined palisade around its border. Within they could see a chalky skinned humanoid in robes working on the ritual cauldron with numerous supplicants chanting in front of him. The group made a plan to use a pincer attack and sneak into the ritual and bash heads. It went pretty seamless with Harvey using shatter on the cauldron, spraying purple goo, splashing Terror and the supplicants. The group charged in, bashing the spell casting wight, an undead creature, into a fine pile of mess rather quickly. The supplicants went into a rage, they were berserkers and tore into the party. Longshot made good use of duel wielding blades, even with the magic corruption Terror resisted the magical curse and continued to pelt the berserkers with spells, Gorg switched between using her spear and maul dealing great damage to her foes, Nonne used both his breath weapon and blade, Harvey blasted his foes with eldritch might, Halanthis was terrifying as a large axe beak, and Balziros made good use of primal savagery. Spells and blade saved the day, but the party did notice their magic seemed to be making some of the purple goo spread faster, spores were filling the air around them. They searched the dead and found the wight had an odd selection of spell components, one of which was a unicorn heart. The group advised the lizard folk Balziros to not eat it. the session ended there, as the group felt the air beginning to cool.

Road to Auer Session 3: Goblin Tower and the Underground

The Group consisted of eight, two heroes found adventure elsewhere. They made their way up the flight of stairs to find a chamber with a seated almost skeletal hobgoblin as well as three bound humanoid figures, a large bed, and other random furniture. The goblin from the previous room was here as well, sulking in the shadows. A possible and weird hostage situation was broken when the group murdered the goblin they had been following. They noticed the blood spray splashed all three of the figures, but only showed up on the center one. Realizing this meant there were illusions on the other two the group, and they were right. The fake hostages were hobgoblin monks that quickly began repositioning to start pummeling the party. Nonne charged in and with Longshot flanked one of the monks. 04 ran up to the skeletal hobgoblin wizard and was greeted with a burning hands spell, igniting many of the poorly built flyers on the ceiling as well as a strange book on the edge of the table.

The bound figure on the other side of the room started panicking, trying to tell the party to get his spellbook, but being bound and gagged made it hard to understand. Longshot was able to untie him while Halanthis used his control fire ability to remove the multiple fires in the room. Harvey used his mage hand to retrieve the book and extinguish a few of the lingering flames on it. Balziros ran up to use primal savagery, a pretty cool spell, on the hobgoblin wizard. He and 04 were hit with another blast of arcane fire while Gorg and Nonne tried to keep the monks away from their spell casters. Terror was able to kill off one of the monks with a spell and Gorg made paste from the other. 04 was able to eventually bring down the wizard, but slightly alarmed when the spirit of the now deceased floated through the wall cackling. The group rejoiced at their survival, there had been a few close moments.

Cervantes took his chance to introduce himself to the party. It seemed he was a wizard friend of their employer, Corsco Wightbane. Cervantes had been attacked on the road and brought before the wizard. His now extinguished spell book would allow him to help the party out. He made a dome of magical energy for the party to rest in and Nonne had to investigate a large wardrobe to make sure it did not lead anywhere else or have satyrs or fawns in it. The group did take a few fancy robes and cloaks. During the night they heard a sound outside and looked out the towers window to see multiple goblins riding on wolves, scores of pale humanoids with red glowing eyes, and large lumbering undead monstrosities. They were headed away and to the south. Knowing they were drastically outnumbered, they went back to sleep.

In the morning the group decided to look closer at the hole on the floor and Balziros dropped a magic illuminated coin down it. they figured it was maybe sixtyish feet deep. They looked around the tower and noticed their wolf friend was gone and there were no goblins anywhere. There was a strange fake shrub attached to a trap door behind the tower that lead into the basement. they saw multiple foot print leading out, many looked to belong to large creatures. Below they found first a magic glowing coin and a large cavern with random bits of devoured people littering the ground. The group found some rings, oddly enough for each player to have both a silver ring and a gold ring. After some giggles they found a long tunnel that was only about a two feet tall and something was jammed in the back of it. Harvey investigated and was attacked by a swarm of severed hands. The party quickly and painlessly dealt with the grasping chaos hand tornado, Halanthis and Nonne did a cool combo move of Nonne shooting out his fire breath and Halanthis using control flames to hook the fire over the party and into the swarm. Back in the tunnel they found a small chest and found a few oddities within. There was a cloak that was pristine even after all this time, and seemed to reject dirt, there was a silver longsword, a magic dagger that would glow around undead, old gold coins and the deed to the tower. The deed was odd that there was no family name attached to it, so with a little notary help from Cervantes they had the tower put into Harvey’s family name, so now the Baerdman estate.

They made their way back to Telas and went to report back to Corsco Wightbane about their successful mission as well as where the goblins seemed to be heading. They watched a moment of concern pass his face, he excused himself for a moment and pulled out a sending stone. He called an ally he had in Moco, the lighthouse city of elves and gave them a heads up about an army of goblins and the dead might be making their way to their fine city for a visit. Corsco thanked the party for all they did and Harvey offered to rent his tower to him. Corsco thanked him for the offer and told him he had a pan in every fire in this city, he did not need another money pit, mentioning the now shown deed was for an entire estate, not just the tower. Corsco paid the group, they bought more supplies and potions for the road and had any magical items identified. They stayed the night at the Brimsoaked Bottle, which was pretty much the employee club house for Corsco’s minions. The group figured Moco could handle the goblins and chose to head into Briar’s Woods to look into the sickness that had been taking over. They also hit level 3.